Various industries often require supplementary doors, room separators, vestibles or baffles to isolate one area from another. Such devices serve to reduce or eliminate the introduction of adverse temperatures, humidity drafts or polluted air in the form of dust or contaminents into an adjacent area. Undesirable levels of sound can also be reduced or isolated. In some cases separation of areas for reasons of asthetics would apply. Industries involved in the handling of meats, poultry, fish, produce, dairy, ice cream, freeze drying, warehousing, ice making, manufacturing, etc., requiring refrigerated rooms for cooling or freezing, have a need for these products, for example. This includes all levels of a specific industry from basic processing to distribution to the retailer.
Examples of typical use are as follow.
Refrigerator or freezer doors are often opened many times in the course of any work shift. This imposes heat loads on refrigeration equipment and effects room temperature levels. It can also create icing conditions as a result of the introduction of warmer moist air into freezer rooms that can create undesirable icing on products, refrigeration equipment, rack systems, ceilings or floors. In the latter case, it operates a safety hazard to passing fork trucks and/or personnel on foot. Product spoilage can also be a resulting factor.
All of these problems can cost the owner money in the form of wasted energy or liability.
Supplementary double-acting doors or curtains placed in the same opening behind refrigerator or freezer doors greatly reduce all of the above mentioned problems. They serve to constantly keep the refrigerated room separated from the areas of different temperatures and humidity even though they do not offer as good a seal or insulation value as the main doors. The main doors are needed to close off these areas at night, weekends, holidays or during slow production periods. The supplementary doors do their job when traffic is heavy and main doors are constantly left open or are opened and closed frequently. The supplementary door closes automatically by means of mechanical devices.
The same principle is needed to be elaborated on for more efficient insulation which as a part of the present invention shall be later elaborated on with regard to air lock tunnels.
When the environmental conditions are not as critical on either side of a door opening, supplementary type doors can serve as the main or only door in the opening.
Supplementary doors can serve also to contain cool air in air conditioned buildings and/or warm air in heated buildings.
Supplementary doors are used to separate wash-down or clean-up rooms from processing areas in food plants.
A need exists to separate volatile dusts or gases from areas where they could be accidentally ignited if permitted to form in heavy concentrations.
Kosher products are required to be separated from non-kosher products.
Machinery or other sound devices can be separated from areas where hearing could be effected or harmed.
Temporary room dividers can be erected or removed at will to satisfy seasonal production or storage requirements where a single room is desired to be temporarily separated into smaller areas of different temperatures and later returned to the same temperature.
Curtain baffles can serve to deflect controlled temperature areas to where it is needed most, increasing efficiency and reducing waste.
Curing rooms requiring moderate heat, but not requiring absolute seals, utilize supplementary doors.
Where products such as meats are processed, retention of high humidities are desired to prevent loss of moisture in the meat that results in weight loss in the raw meats.
The broad concept of supplementary doors, room separators, and vestibules or baffles, is not new.